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Gahanna high school’s robotics club take plunge with underwater projects

Unusual field tests students’ abilities

Request to buy this photoThomas Levinson | DispatchSoldering wires is part of building a robot, as shown by two juniors in Gahanna Lincoln High School’s underwater-robotics club: Emily Merickel, 16, left, and Laura Stegner, 17. Last year’s club had to build and guide a robot to mimic oil extraction on the bottom of a swimming pool.

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It wasn’t enough to be one more high-school robotics club among hundreds across the country.
Fred Donelson wanted something to give his students an edge.

So when the science teacher started a robotics club at Gahanna Lincoln High School six years
ago, he told students they would be competing in a regional tournament much like those gaining
popularity at other schools, but with a twist: It would be underwater.

“It’s unusual, which is partly the reason why I picked it,” Donelson said. “It’s really hard to
set yourself apart when you go in for college scholarships. Underwater robotics seemed to be a
pretty unique thing.”

Since the club formed, Lincoln has remained the only central Ohio high school with an
underwater-robotics club and one of only a few in the state, even as experts tout the advantages
students gain by building for water.

Like competitions on land that draw students from Dublin, Upper Arlington and Worthington
schools, aquatic competitions give students months to build a robot suited for particular tasks.
Last year, Gahanna students faced mimicking oil extraction on the bottom of a swimming pool.

Judges rank teams based on how well they maneuver the robot, complete the tasks and explain the
design.

“That’s what the kids need practice with. Sitting in a classroom, you don’t have context,” said
Shawna Fletcher, interim director of the Women in Engineering program at Ohio State University. “
There are pressure and density issues and getting things watertight instead of waterproof. There’s
a huge difference.”

In her work at Ohio State and Arizona State University, Fletcher has seen some students with
underwater experience thrive while their peers struggled: “They’re just way ahead of the game.”

The Gahanna team also represents a rebellion against the high costs of big-name competitions.
For example, the FIRST Robotics Competition, a national land-based contest, has annual fees often
as high as $10,000. The Gahanna club spends about $600 a year.

On a recent lunch break, 18-year-old Lincoln student Luke Radloff drove to a hardware store to
choose a gasket for the PVC-and-glue robot. Frugality is the mantra of the Lincoln team and the
tournament run by the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center.

Building from scratch with low-tech parts reinforces the basics, Donelson said.

The team has had good years and bad but typically advances to an international round of the
contest and places in the top few at the regional stage in Alpena, Mich. Donelson, though, points
to the wall of photos by his classroom — a science hall of fame — as proof of the club’s
accomplishments.

The wall includes a photo of Emily Gyde, who said the club inspired her to form an
underwater-robotics club at Ohio State and steered her career.

“It really set the stage for what I want to do,” said Gyde, 23, a researcher at Battelle. “I
definitely would not be where I am now without my experience at Gahanna.”

Although the Gahanna team doesn’t know its mission yet, the members have met every week for
months. Some of the dozen students soldered wires, others designed a grasping claw. In April, they’l
l drive seven hours north and plunge the robot into an indoor pool, where one team member will
steer it remotely through the obstacles of the contest.

Later, the students plan to use their robot to explore Lake Erie shipwrecks and research nearby
marine life.

Some of them want to be engineers. Others were drawn by curiosity. Several are gamers who jumped
at an extracurricular activity that involves computers.

“I built my first computer with my dad when I was like 7,” said Nathan Alden, 17, who fine-tuned
the robot’s controls last year.

As the students design and build, loud debates occasionally erupt over the nuances of a robotic
arm or the easiest way to maneuver it. Rather than interrupt, Donelson watches from a distance in
his white lab coat and smiles.

He started the club, he said, for moments like that.

“That’s maybe the epitome of education,” he said. “ They’re thinking about how to do it
themselves in unique ways, without me having to prompt them."